Einstein:
His Life and Universe
by Walter Isaacson
Posted on 04/21/2007 4:00:33 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
The fact that he spent seven years as a patent clerk -- and wrote the paper for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in that period -- is often presented as one of history's great injustices, but Einstein would disagree. He wrote in an autobiographical sketch that the daily examination of patent applications "stimulated me to see the physical ramifications of theoretical concepts." His superior, Friedrich Haller, "graciously ignored" the fact that Einstein completed his work in two or three hours and spent the rest of his time on physics; further, he insisted that the examiners "think that everything the inventor says is wrong", encouraging Einstein's native skepticism and willingness to "question every premise, challenge conventional wisdom." A starting position in the academy would have offered none of these benefits, and Einstein would have likely seen his creativity and independence of thought stifled.
(Excerpt) Read more at american.com ...
Einstein:
His Life and Universe
by Walter Isaacson
“stimulated me to see the physical ramifications of theoretical concepts.”
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Particularly shampoo and conditioner;)
sod!
Hair’s to that joke!
Damn, it seems, to not be attractive, smart or rich is the lot of most of us! As Abe said, God must love poor folks as he made so many of them!!
Yup - it’s really challenging - being in the minority; gorgeous, brainy with a charming sense of humor.
Humble is the really tough one.
sod!
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/05/03/180155.aspx
Author-journalist Walter Isaacson is CEO of the Aspen Institute
One interesting thing about Einstein is why he failed so miserably in the last part of his life... One of his collaborators at Princeton, Banesh Hoffmann, said that they had no ground lines. Einstein had been able to visualize everything up until then, but in the end they were just doing pure mathematical formalism. Which is the problem with string theory now. It’s absolutely the most elegant thing you can imagine, but it’s just mathematical formalism. It doesn’t have a ground line to say here’s where it connects with reality. I’m not a string theorist, but even string theorists will tell you they haven’t yet found a way to say “here, let’s test it,” or “let’s visualize it, what’s the underlying physical reality to string theory.”
And that’s where Einstein fails on the unified field theory. He doesn’t have that imaginative image: “Oh, light’s a particle” ... “Oh, if you’re synchronizing clocks, it’s relative when you’re moving” ... “Oh, acceleration and gravity are equivalent if you’re in an enclosed chamber.” All these are totally cool ideas that my 16-year-old daughter can perfectly understand. “Oh, yeah, you’re in an enclosed chamber, you’re accelerating upward, it feels just like gravity.” From that springs the equivalence principle.
I would be much interested in this biography of Einstein. Have you read it?
Nope. And who’s this Einstein character? ;’)
He’s the guy who invented beebers, of course.
In the old country, his ancestors lived between the Nullsteins and the Zweisteins.
I live near Meistein, and it happens to be drei.
Yoda of the universeEinstein had little faith in quantum physics and was out of step with most leading physicists. He would, I think, have hated string theory, which, with its 16 dimensions, cannot be verified. It exists only in its equations.
by Meir Ronnen
Aug. 9, 2007
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